HOUSTON (AP) - A pearl of wisdom Kurt Vonnegut never uttered might serve him well during his trip to hot and sunny Houston this weekend: Wear sunscreen.

The novelist is scheduled to send this spring's crop of Rice University graduates off into the world Saturday. It will be his first commencement address since a piece of e-mail that made its way through the Internet last year erroneously attributed a graduation speech containing the sunscreen wisecrack to Vonnegut.

Even Vonnegut's wife, photographer Jill Krementz, thought he delivered the address, which was peppered with random nuggets that carried Vonnegut's gift for relevant absurdity.

The "sunscreen speech" actually was a column written by the Chicago Tribune's Mary Schmich last June. Somewhere in the electronic morass it was transformed into a Vonnegut address at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"I think it was a darling column she wrote, but I would never do that to MIT," the 75-year-old Vonnegut said in a telephone interview from his home in suburban New York. "I certainly intend to be a hell of a lot more serious with Rice."

That would be disappointing to Rice student Chris Smith, a statistics specialist who will take the three degrees he earned in four years into an investment banking career.

Smith, who has read "eight to 10" of Vonnegut's 14 novels, his favorite being "Breakfast of Champions," is looking forward to a uniquely Vonnegut-esque speech.

"I'm ecstatic. I was really hoping for someone amusing and entertaining," Smith said. "We could have gotten some stodgy and uptight politician who wouldn't have been any fun."

Vonnegut promised not to urge Rice grads to floss, dance, sing, and "remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how." All of that advice was in the faux address.

Rice tapped Vonnegut for the '98 address before the hoax.

Vonnegut is perhaps best known for "Slaughterhouse-Five" in 1969 and "Cat's Cradle" in 1963. But a character in "The Sirens of Titan" (1959) might have said it best: "I was a victim of a series of accidents as are we all."

Despite the hoax, Vonnegut said he believes the current college-age generation looks at television and other mass media with a more critical eye than its parents did.